Weight lifting to generate muscle growth or increase muscle tone is well known to athletes and non-athletes alike. As such, free weights, weight benches and universal weight sets have become a popular item with people looking to exercise and lift weights in the privacy of their own home. Weight lifting typically includes several types of exercises that concentrate on specific areas of the body, such as chest, shoulders, arms and legs. Universal weight sets are ideal for this type of exercise and are typically constructed such that a central stack of weights can be used to perform several different types of exercises that ‘work’ one or more general group of muscles. Unfortunately, because the weights typically cannot be removed from the universal weight set, the exercises are defined and the user cannot use the weights outside of the defined usage.
For this reason, the more serious or experience weight lifters favor the use of “free weights” or weights that are not connected to a universal machine. Free weights allow a lifter to not only work a general muscle group (such as chest, arms, etc.), but they also allow a lifter to concentrate on specific muscles within a general muscle group. For example, one of the more common weight lifting tools is a bench press bench 100, as shown in FIG. 1. The bench press bench 100 typically includes a bench portion 102 and a barbell cradle 104, where the user would rest a barbell 106 having weights 108 in the barbell cradle 104 and lay on the bench portion 102 to be at least partially under the barbell 106. The user would then lift the barbell 106 off of the barbell cradle 104 and proceed to ‘bench’ the barbell 106 and weights 108. When finished, the user would then place the barbell 106 back into the barbell cradle 104. In some bench press benches 100, the bench portion 102 is configurable between a flat configuration and an angled (inclined/declined) configuration. This inclination/declination ability allows the user to concentrate the bench press exercise on specific areas of the chest.
In a similar fashion, more experience weight lifters like to use the bench press bench 100 for dumbbell presses to better isolate exercises to specific chest and arm areas. Unfortunately, current barbell cradles 104 are not able to work with dumbbells due to their size and configuration. Accordingly, the user must hold the dumbbells and get into position for performing the dumbbell press. While this is easily accomplished with dumbbells having lighter weights, the difficulty increases as the weight increases. One method to overcome this issue involves weight benches that are custom designed to work with dumbbells. Unfortunately, these types of specialized weight benches are expensive, complicated and limited in uses. Another method involves an “add on” that is mounted to an existing bench that is designed to work with dumbbells. Unfortunately, this type of addition must be customized to the bench the user is using.